Courage to End The Dream
by ShirayurihaShaku
Summary: What would you do if you lived in nightmares? What would you think about yourself? What would you see in the mirror? What would you do if you faced yourself? Would you have the courage to look into your heart? Could you survive from yourself? Or would you lose yourself in the darkness that is yourself? (Rewrite of Legend: Alter, see Authors Notes. WARNING: Suicide Imagery.)
1. Prologue

***See the end of the Chapter for Author's Notes.**

 _ **Prologue**_

If only his mind's eye became blind.

If only his screaming consciousness became mute.

If only his heart stopped aching, the mocking laughter in the back of his mind became silent and the salty flavor of tears left the corners of his lips and the tip of his nose disappeared.

Then he could find peace.

He knew he was such a wretched creature that peace was anathema to his existence. He knew that the word would not tolerate such a travesty.

There was nothing good he could offer to the world. His life was empty, his deeds meaningless.

But like any human, he selfishly desired such things as affection, validation and acknowledgment despite having nothing to offer in return.

He wished death would claim him with its icy hands. He wished he wasn't such a coward that taking his own life seemed daunting. He could stop the hurt and the pain inflicted on everyone who had the misfortune to associate with him.

So that's why he decided to shut himself away in the darkness and sleep.

Sleep was Death's sibling, after all. Even if his failings haunted him in his dreams, at least, they were just that, dreams. The people he hurt or inconvenienced with his existence would be free from him that way.

He was sorry he ever existed. He was sorry that he was a coward.

One, two, three... Three of those white pills at a time.

A gulp of water to help them go down.

The bottle of water was barely gone... His throat still felt dry, but he resisted the urge to down the bottle in one go.

He laid down on the cold, hard floor and stared at the cobwebbed ceiling only barely visible through the inky darkness.

It was late and he was already sleepy, so his eyes quickly became heavy. A small smile came to his lips as a sense of exhilaration filled his body.

He'll finally be free.

* * *

He was floating in a sea of nothingness.

His sight was filled with darkness.

His ears were filled with silence.

His nostrils smelled nothing.

His skin felt numb.

But there was a certain bliss in this oblivion.

But soon the world came into being. He was falling, or rather, drowning slowly. He didn't feel like he was suffocating as he fell deeper into what he assumed was the sea.

His eyes were focused upwards, towards a rippling sky and shimmering sun. Defying all logic, he didn't feel the crushing pressure of the water on his body, nor did his slightly gaping mouth become filled with water even though he could see small bubbles of air rising from it.

But dreams rarely followed any form of logic, did they?

Yes, he knew he was dreaming.

Lucid Dreaming: When one is fully aware of a dream while one dreams.

Usually, one does not realize that one is dreaming regardless of how bizarre the dream is. But lucid dreamers consciously experience the dreams and have some degree of control over it...

His mind repeated all the information he gathered from the internet and various books in the library as he floated deeper downwards. The world around him turned a deeper and darker blue as less light was able to penetrate the thick curtain of phantasmagorical water.

He noticed that two walls of stone were rising from either side of him and he breathed a sigh of relief. He had made it to the trench earlier than usual.

Like numerous times before this, he would slowly be engulfed by the darkness filled abyss before reemerging into a caricature of his bedroom.

And lo, there he was after a brief period of darkness, his feet suddenly on "solid ground" even though he felt only a very dull sensation of weight. He looked around, bored already. He wasn't able to influence this place at all, and all he could do was wait for him to wake up or...

He looked into the dream version of the mirror hanging in a corner of his room, horrified and transfixed at the creature staring back at him.

It grinned.

* * *

Kurosawa Ayumu startled awake with a great gasp. He started touching his face frantically while shuddering, small beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

He looked around his darkened room, his breathing becoming less erratic as the terror trickled away from him. With a deep breath, he got out of his bed and took a tentative step towards the mirror hanging in a corner beside a sizable bookshelf.

His reflection came into view. The usual figure of a noodly Japanese teenager with messy and wiry black hair and murky black eyes came stared back at him, with the only difference that his face was drained of all its color.

He exhaled, his heart still bouncing in his chest. He returned to his bed and sat on one corner, before cradling his head in his hands while resting his elbows on his thighs. His fingers became moist from the sweat that had formed on his brow, but he ignored it.

The sound of a sharp beeping noise penetrated the silence after a while, and Ayumu stared at the digital alarm clock for a few seconds before turning it off.

He looked at the new uniform hanging on the wall... A navy blazer with matching dress pants, a white dress shirt and a navy tie to complete the ensemble. The crest of his new high school, a single yellow thunderbolt sat proudly on the single chest pocket of the blazer and the tie.

He sighed, hoping that the dream was just a manifestation of anxiousness and not some portent.

But knowing his luck, he might as well say that the nightmare had jinxed his already assumed-but-probably-certain-to-be-unlucky three years of high school.

* * *

 ** _Author's Notes:_**

This story was adopted by me by request of "Fragments of Dreams". It was originally titled "Legend: Alter", but I decided after reading his (ridiculously long) notes that this title was more fitting. Note that I shall not be using the OCs submitted which I apologize for, but I'm not comfortable adding OCs to stories that do not add to the story or setting in any meaningful way. Also, after consulting with Fragments of Dreams, I've decided to take some liberties with this story to make it less convoluted (with his consent, of course). Please bear with me and I hope I can do this story justice, especially after reading his extensive notes on the plotline and the OC Kurosawa Ayumu.

I've also adopted Monochrome Days but don't expect any updates on that soon since I'm working on this and Another Fate (my own story) concurrently.

Finally, I apologize for writing these notes here instead of my profile, but since it has been empty for the longest of times, I doubted that most people would actually read it if I wrote it there...


	2. Inazuma High

_**Raimon High**_

Raimon High was affiliated with the famous Raimon Junior High, as their names would imply. Yes, the same Raimon Junior High which produced the soccer team Raimon Eleven, who broke Teikoku Academy's ten-year winning streak in the Football Frontier, foiled the Aliea Academy Conspiracy and then went to contribute to most of the members of Inazuma Japan which won the Football Frontier International…

Not that he cared about that. Kurosawa Ayumu had been proven repeatedly to lack any kind of athletic talent, so the fact that both Raimon Junior and Raimon High has some of the best facilities for their soccer team was more or less just vaguely interesting trivia for him.

He was more interested in the Library. He read in the school's website about it, and he couldn't help getting excited about the extensive collection they have. Plus it's organized using a modified Library of Congress Classification rather than the standard Nippon Decimal Classification System! The bibliophile in him was salivating at the prospect of getting his hands on the English versions of The Water Babies, Like Water for Chocolate and Le Grande Meaulnes…

* * *

It had been ten minutes after Ayumu had jolted awake, and about eight minutes and thirty-nine seconds since he had turned off the alarm clock which was set to go off at exactly six forty-five AM Japan Standard Time, Tokyo (GMT+0900).

He was set and ready to go… Only, it'll take about Fifteen minutes to reach Raimon High on foot and class starts at eight-thirty, with the Opening Ceremony at eight.

He had all the time in the world to dawdle.

One would question the wisdom of waking up and getting ready so early, but it was just the result of unforeseen circumstances.

Kurosawa Ayumu wasn't exactly a morning person. He was counting on oversleeping on inopportune occasions as usual, so set two alarms half an hour apart so he could haphazardly get ready and have breakfast, dazed and half-asleep, in the span of fifteen odd minutes before sluggishly leaving, with at least one instance of backtracking frantically for something he forgot and couldn't remember where he put.

However, he decided to see this as a blessing. He won't arrive gasping for breath while everyone else is filing leisurely into the auditorium, for one.

He sighed, still lost in contemplation as he combed his stiff hair to arrange itself into something other than an ugly kind of curtained hair parted in the middle. But alas, his daily ritual was as futile as it was every other occasion for the last five years following his head being shaved.

He cringed as unpleasant memories flooded back from the depths of the back of his mind.

He wished he could control these sudden cringe attacks, especially since he had a lot of things to cringe about after all these years…

And there was a really low chance of such embarrassing, humiliating and degrading situations not occurring in the next three years. It was almost second nature of Kurosawa Ayumu to inadvertently humiliate himself.

He gave up on that exercise in futility and walked back towards his bed and sat down, wondering if he should read something while he waited for his parents to wake up. He can't really march out of the house without telling them even though he has a personal copy of the keys of the house.

He softly tapped his foot onto the floor of his room which was covered in a sky-blue carpet as he brought out his cellphone from his bag. Flipping it open, he opened the web page he had saved the previous night before going to sleep.

" _Dream Interpretation: From Iskar Zaqiqu to Ta'bir al-Ru'ya to Die Tramudeutung_ " was the title of the rather lengthy article… and it was also stupidly sensational, since it barely touched any sources outside of the ones he found in the Wikipedia article about the subject. It mentions Ta'bir Al-Ru'ya in the article title yet it just namedrops it in the middle of a paragraph about Muslim dream interpretation processes in the middle ages and ignores it altogether along with Ibn Sirin's other work. The attempt to align Freudian dream interpretation with the dream Gilgamesh had before his meeting with Enkidu was notably eye-roll inducing.

Axes are supposedly "phallic". Seriously, did the author actually ever see an axe!? Did anything with a stick-like handle automatically count as "phallic"? Did that make hammers phallic as well? Or maces? Doesn't one swing an axe as opposed to thrusting it? Isn't a thrusting action requisite for something to be phallic? (He knew it was a rather odd thing to be hung up on, but as a Fantasy RPG and medieval weapon enthusiast he always gets agitated when people make idiotic claims like "Shields are only for defense" or "European broadswords do not have the same cutting power as Katanas" etcetera. Axes were for slashing, dammit!)

However, he had a slight inclination towards what he called "intellectual masochism" which means that he basically can't stop himself from reading cringe-inducing and mind-numbingly idiotic articles (and the equally charming comments sections). Inevitable when one's a long-time denizen of the "interwebz".

He finished the article, feeling nothing more than a faint sense of disappointment. He was hoping to find some sources to fathom these lucid dreams he had been having. Sources other than those dream dictionaries Uncle Google spits out every time he types "Dream Interpretation" into the search box.

Letting out an exaggerated sigh after seeing the clock strike five-past-seven, he got up and deactivated the second alarm he had set before grabbing his bag and pocketing his cellphone.

He opened the door out of his room which was located on the first floor of the house and was closest to the narrow stairs leading down to the ground floor hallway.

He entered into the kitchen-cum-dining room, rather surprised at how bright it was already.

"Well, it _is_ springtime." He told himself as he approached the cupboard where they kept the bread and jam. He was a little disappointed to find his preferred orange marmalade had been emptied out. He was hoping his little sister hadn't used up all of it the other day in her attempt at "cooking" (he preferred to call the activity ritualistic sacrilege to the name of the God of Gastronomy (if such a thing existed), but even he acknowledged it's too over-dramatic an epitaph. The motive behind them didn't match up regardless of the results.)

Its notable that Kurosawa Ayumu, while was a rather apt in his studies, tends to go off on odd and barely coherent tangents of thoughts. Especially when he had nothing to occupy him. So the next five minutes were just him contemplating giving his sister proper cooking lessons and the possible outcomes which included blatant disrespect, him suffering heavy verbal and physical abuse, at least one instance of a catastrophic fire burning down the Kurosawa residence, SCP agents knocking at their door and confiscating the creation and the summoning of Y'golonac demanding a duel against his little sister to uphold his epitaph of "The Defiler".

He then prudently pushed all thoughts of teaching Kurosawa Chie how to cook out of his mind. The stakes were too high.

Plus he'd feel bad for all those D-class personnel and Y'golonac.

Would the overthrow of an Old One by a human teenage girl break reality, by any chance?

"Ohayo gozaimassu…" He said in his soft, barely audible voice when he saw his mother entering the room.

"You're awake early, Yume-kun." Kurosawa Eriko said rather incredulously, combing her shoulder-length hair with her fingers. It looked like she hadn't fully gotten ready yet since her work hours started at nine.

"…Okaa-san, could you please stop calling me that?" He said wearily for the…

Six-hundred and three, four, five… Yes, five-hundred and twenty-seventh time.

"Why? It's a lovely nickname. Your Grandfather wanted to name you that, you know." His mother said, with the same tone she used every other time he had asked her to stop using that name.

"It's a girl's name… At lease shorten it to Yuu…" He said in a whisper while looking at the bread crusts he left behind on his plate, which didn't reach his mother.

"Anyway, I'm happy that you're eager to start the school year. Remember to keep your notes clean and concentrate on improving your handwriting like you did in your third year of middle school." She started, going over to the kitchen counter and pulling out a kettle to brew some tea.

"…Oh, and be sure to avoid any miscreants that might be in your class. And do something about your slouch…" She continued, giving out advice all through the brewing process and also while pouring the tea into her and Ayumu's personal mugs (they were unorthodox that way… However, his mother always cried blasphemy when served any type of Japanese green tea in anything but Yunomi.)

"Yes, Okaa-san." He said, neatly hiding the exasperation he felt like the dutiful son he was raised to be as he reached for the mug. He then slowly sipped his tea as his mother continued her routine tirade.

"I should be going. I want to look around the school grounds for a bit." He said as he got up from the dining table in front of the kitchen counter after finishing his tea.

"Isn't it a little too early?" Eriko said as she chewed on a liberally jammed piece of toast. She looked at the clock located on the wall facing the dining table opposite to a window.

"Better early than late." Ayumu said simply before leaving for the door.

"Shouldn't you wait for your father to come down?" She called as Ayumu closed the door behind him while acting as though he hadn't heard.

In all honesty, his father was the last person he wanted to meet early in the morning. He seemed to be going through a rebellious phase, the idiotic wish for dominance males have in that part of the brain that's remained unchanged since time immemorial. Or something like that.

Knowing Freud, it'd be something to do with an Oedipus Complex. And something about phalluses shoehorned in there somewhere for good measure.

Thank God contemporary Psychology wasn't remotely that squick-inducing.

He stepped out of the front door with a soft "Ittekimassu…" and breaking into a brisk jog.

He was walking faster than he would usually even though he wasn't in a hurry; the sense of liberation was just so invigorating that he had an urge to break into a run.

He was finally free from his embarrassing three years of middle school! He was starting anew! He could walk in the street without being paranoid of being watched by someone or meeting someone he knew from school.

…But the thought of the future extinguished that short-lived fire that had ignited inside him like cold water. He slowed back to a walk as morbid thoughts of future humiliations, both self-inflicted and otherwise, entered into his mind. He breathed deeply, noticing that his heartbeats had quickened.

As he turned a corner and came to the main road leading to Inazuma High. There wasn't any notable traffic, and the amount of people on the sidewalk was lower than the norm.

He heard some faint voices yelling as he approached the main gates of the school. The symbol of Raimon and Inazuma Town, a single bolt of lightning colored yellow and outlined with blue, adorned each half of the gates. The main building stood a few hundred meters behind the gates, with an impressive sculpture of the school crest sat impressively in the middle which was twice as tall as an adult.

He entered through the slightly parted gates, flashing his ID card towards the guard. As he approached the large statue he saw that the soccer club was having an early morning practice… which was odd considering this was the first day of the semester… maybe it was to attract more freshmen? He'll have to check how many of the people from Inazuma Japan were part of the current Inazuma High team when he has some time to kill.

There was a surprising lack of cherry trees in full bloom was his thought as he looked towards the road leading towards the main building. Not that he was complaining, but a romantic walk between two rows of cherry trees in the midst of a shower of dainty pink petals towards his future high school would've been the perfect kind of romantic moment he would cherish and reminisce about after growing old alone with a few cats. And dozens of kittens. And Shiba Inu puppies. Never forget Shiba Inu puppies.

Why couldn't he have a delusion of a "Bara-Iro Seishun~"* too? If some of the brain-dead nationalists could romanticize Imperial Japan, he definitely had the right to romanticize his youth like every other adult does and did since the advent of nostalgia!

" _Fire Tornado!_ "

But it wasn't all bad, he was at least able to walk by a patch of purple _Prunella prunelliformis_ (Makino; he always thought they were more common around the Fukushima prefecture) that was planted around the huge statue of the school crest…

" _Ijigen the Hand!_ "

A light breeze had picked up, and he couldn't help but close his eyes blissfully as the delicious spring air filled his nostrils and caressed his face…

"Hey! Look out!" A voice called somewhere on his left, and a few other voices accompanied it in a frantic bid to catch someone's attention.

"What's with all the commotion?" He wondered and looked in the direction of the din…

Only for a black-and-white sphere to crash into his face with such force that he was knocked off his feet.

As he fell backwards and begun to lose consciousness from the concussion, a haiku by Issa popped into his mind:

 _Sleeping, waking,_

 _And then giving a great yawn_

 _Fuck my life with a cat's barbed dick._ *

* * *

 _ **AN:**_

 **1\. Rosy/Rose-colored Youth/Adolescence, spoken in Miyuki Sawashiro's best loli voice.  
**

 **2\. Sleeping, waking.**

 **And then giving a great yawn,**

 **The cat goes out for lovemaking.**

 **(Ne te Okite**

 **O akubi shite**

 **Neko no koi.)**


End file.
